THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. MAY, 1833. MEMOIR OF SAMUEL DREW, A. M. LATE EDITOR OF THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. (With a Portrait.) THOSE individuals who have raised themselves from obscurity to distinction, always attract our notice; but when that distinction has been attained in spite of obstacles apparently insurmountable, they become the especial objects of our curiosity. This feeling is not only laudable, but beneficial. Curiosity leads to knowledge; knowledge begets admiration; and admiration becomes an incentive to honourable effort. It is this which gives biography its value; and of few persons can the biography be more instructive than the subject of this memoir. To the readers of the Imperial Magazine, the name of SAMUEL Drew has long been familiar. From the commencement of this miscellany he has been its acknowledged Editor; and to his judicious management, it owes much of its popularity. But this connexion death has dissolved. Mr. Drew no longer ranks among living authors. It is our melancholy duty to announce his decease, and to present to our readers those outlines of his life and character, the filling up of which requires ampler space than our pages can furnish. Mr. SAMUEL DREW was born on the 3d of March, 1765, in an obscure cottage in the parish, and about a mile and a half from the town, of St. Austell, in the county of Cornwall; he was the second son of four children, of whom one died in childhood, one at maturity, and one, a sister, still survives. His parents were poor, but pious. His father, who earned a bare subsistence for himself and family by his daily labour as a husbandman, was a convert of Mr. John Wesley, whose society he joined in early life. His mother, whom he had the misfortune to lose before he was seven years old, was a decidedly religious woman, and of strong intellectual powers. Of her memory he always spoke with the deepest reverence and affection; and the pious lessons, which in his infancy he learnt from her, were never forgotten. Such was the poverty of his parents, that, though they were fully aware of the importance of education, they could only send their children to school for a very short period. During his mother's life-time, and with her assistance, he was able to read easy words; and with the instruction of his elder brother, who had been a little while with a writingmaster, he learnt to form the letters of the alphabet. This was the extent of his education. On his mother's death, he was taken from school, and sent to work at a mill near his father's cottage, where tinners refine their ore. His wages were at first three-halfpence, and were afterwards advanced to two-pence per diem. This was left in the hands of the proprietor of the works, to accumulate; but when it had amounted to six shillings, he became insolvent, and the poor labouring boy was thus unjustly deprived of his first 2D. SERIES, NO. 29.-VOL. III. 2 c 173.-VOL. XV. earnings. When rather more than ten years old, his father bound him an apprentice for nine years, to a shoemaker, in the adjoining parish of St. Blazey. During his apprenticeship, Mr. Drew had occasional access to a little publication which was then popular in the western counties, called the Weekly Entertainer. The narratives and anecdotes which it contained interested him; and their perusal prevented him from losing the little ability to read, which he had acquired in his infancy; but the art of writing he appears at this time to have nearly lost. The treatment he received while an apprentice being such as his disposition could not brook, he left his master when about seventeen, and refused to return. His father compounded for the residue of the term, and procured him employment, and further instruction in his business, at Millbrook, near Plymouth, in which place and neighbourhood he continued about three years. At the close of the year 1784, or commencement of 1785, when about twenty years of age,' he came to St. Austell, to conduct the shoe - making business for a person who was occasionally a bookbinder. With this employer he remained above three years; and then commenced business in that town on his own account. It was shortly after Mr. Drew had taken up his residence in St. Austell, that he was the subject of those religious impressions, which induced him to become a decided and a devout Christian; and the same gracious influence which first led him to self-examination, appears to have been the means of forming those studious habits, and that resolution to grapple with the difficulties of his situation, which were the foundation of his future celebrity. Previously to his entering on his 21st year, he had evinced no serious feeling. He had gained a reputation among his shopmates and acquaintance, for keenness of argument and quickness at repartee; but to the important matters of personal piety, he had shewn a degree of repugnance. His buoyant spirits, jocose manner, and vivacious disposition, led him, while his judgment was immature, to reject the solemn truths of religion, and even to ridicule those of his acquaintance who chose to embrace them. But the powerful current of his mind was now about to flow in a more suitable channel; and the period had nearly arrived, when, having a clear perception of their truth, his awakened energies would lead him to adopt and defend those doctrines of vital and practical godliness, to which he had hitherto expressed an aversion. In the year 1784-5, the late Dr. (then Mr.) Adam Clarke was appointed to the East Cornwall Circuit, of which St. Austell was the central station, and the residence of the preachers. The preaching of Mr. Clarke and his colleagues aroused Mr. Drew's attention to the weighty subject of personal religion; and the conviction thus begun in his mind was deepened, and rendered effectual to his conversion, by the illness and death of his elder brother, who was then twenty-two years of age. This young man had joined the Methodist society before his sickness; but it was only upon his death-bed, and after great mental agony, that he found that “ peace which passeth all understanding." To the circumstances connected with his brother's decease, Mr. Drew was a witness; and the effect was so powerful, that in a very few weeks he had united himself with the Methodists, and engaged with his accustomed energy in their public labours for the welfare of mankind. His abilities being appreciated by Mr. Clarke and his coadjutors, they were soon called into exercise; and within a brief period, he was appointed to the charge of a class, and employed as a local preacher. He had now entered upon an extensive field of usefulness; and in this field (except as a class-leader, which office he resigned into other hands,) he continued to labour until a few months before his decease. The occasional perusal of books which were brought to the shop of his employer to be bound, awakened Mr. Drew to a consciousness of his own ignorance, and induced him (according to his own expression) "to form a resolution to abandon the grovelling views which he had been accustomed to entertain of things, and to quit the practices of his old associates." He had determined to acquire knowledge; and every moment he could snatch from sleep and labour was now devoted to the reading of such books as his limited finances placed within his reach. One of the difficulties which he had to encounter at this outset of his literary career, arose from his ignorance of the import of words. To overcome this, he found it necessary, while reading, to keep a dictionary constantly at hand. The process was tedious, but it was unavoidable; and the difficulty lessened at every step. A new world was now opened before him. All its paths were untried; and in what direction to push his inquiries, he was yet undecided. Astronomy first attracted his attention; but to the pursuit of this, his ignorance of arithmetic and geometry was an insuperable obstacle. In history, to which his views were next directed, no proficiency could be made without extensive reading; and he had too little command of time and money for such a purpose. The religious bias which he had received tended, however, to give a theological direction to his studies; and from the apparently accidental inspection of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, he acquired a predilection for the higher exercises of the mind. In April 1791, Mr. Drew married,* being then in a creditable way of business. He was not yet an author, but had obtained a name for skill and integrity as a tradesman, and was held in respect by his neighbours. In the year 1798 he first laid the foundation of his Essay on the Human Soul; and it was while this Essay was in its infant state, that a young gentleman put into his hands the first part of Paine's Age of Reason, thinking to bring him over to the principles of infidelity. The sophistry of Paine's book Mr. D. readily detected; and committing his thoughts to writing, he published them in 1799. The little work was favourably received by the public; and it procured for its author the steady friendship of the Rev. John Whitaker, a clergyman of high literary reputation. Upon the Remarks on Paine's Age of Reason, which first brought Mr. Drew before the public as an author, a writer in the Anti-Jacobin Review of April, 1801, observes, "We here see a shoemaker of St. Austell, encountering a staymaker of Deal, with the same weapons of unlettered reason, tempered, indeed, from the armoury of God, yet deriving their principal power from the native vigour of the arm that wields them. Samuel Drew, however, is greatly superior to Thomas Paine, in the justness of his remarks, in the forcibleness of his arguments, and in the pointedness of his refutations." Mr. Drew had the satisfaction of knowing, that his "Remarks" were the means of leading the young gentleman who put the Age of Reason into his hands, to renounce those deistical principles to which he had hoped to proselyte Mr. Drew, and to embrace, with full conviction, the doctrines of Christianity. The Remarks on Paine having been several years out of print, were republished, in duodecimo, with the author's corrections and additions, in 1820. * Mr. Drew had seven children, who were the objects of his most affectionate regard. One died in infancy; the youngest son and daughter reside in London; the eldest daughter and three sons, in Cornwall. Their father lived to see them all married. Soon after the publication of the " Remarks," he sent to the press an Elegy on the Death of a respectable Tradesman of St. Austell, who was drowned at Wadebridge, in Cornwall. This was a piece of mere local and temporary interest, and it was his only metrical publication. It exhibited some tokens of poetic fancy; but it convinced the author, and his more judicious friends, that poetry was not his forte. About the same period, Mr. Drew appeared as a controversial writer. Mr. Polwhele, a Cornish clergyman, had just then published, under the title "Anecdotes of Methodism," a variety of statements designed to bring Methodism into contempt, and to throw discredit on vital Christianity. The want of evidence to support Mr. Polwhele's allegations, and the fallacy of his reasonings, were thought by Mr. Drew a proper subject for remark; and, in his "Observations on Mr. Polwhele's Anecdotes of Methodism," he laid his opinions before the public. But this pamphlet has sunk into oblivion, with that which called it into being. The appearance of the "Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, in 1802, (to which Mr. Drew is chiefly indebted for his reputation as a metaphysician,) brought him into honourable notice beyond his native county. This book was dedicated to the Rev. John Whitaker, whose patronage had, in a great measure, drawn him forth from obscurity. A copy of the work reaching Bristol soon after its appearance, Mr. Richard Edwards, then a bookseller there, wished to possess the copyright. It was sold to him for a very trifling sum; nor did Mr. Drew ever express regret at the apparently unprofitable bargain. This copyright he lived to resume, and again to dispose of, with his latest emendations, to Messrs. Fisher, Son, and Jackson, of London, by whom the fifth English edition* has recently been published. The following extract from a letter written by Mr. Drew to a literary gentleman in Cornwall will describe his mode of study, and exhibit some of the difficulties with which he was surrounded. 66 During these literary pursuits, I regularly and constantly attended on my business; and do not recollect that ever one customer has been disappointed by me through these means. My mode of writing and study may have in them, perhaps, something peculiar. Immersed in the common concerns of life, I endeavour to lift my thoughts to objects more sublime than those with which I am surrounded; and while attending to my trade, I sometimes catch the fibres of an argument, which I endeavour to note the prominent features of, and keep a pen and ink by me for that purpose. In this state, what I can collect through the day remains on any paper which I have at hand, till the business of the day is despatched, and my shop shut up, when, in the midst of my family, I endeavour to analyze, in the evening, such thoughts as had crossed my mind during the day. "I have no study—I have no retirement-I write amidst the cries and cradles of my children and frequently, when I review what I had previously written, endeavour to cultivate the 'art to blot.' Such are the methods which I have pursued, and such the disadvantages under which I write. The public, however, have overlooked that diversity of style and manner which are inseparable from this motley cast of composition. I have been treated with more respect by the enlightened inhabitants of Cornwall, who have given me credit for abilities which I am not conscious of possessing; and the claims which such favours have upon my gratitude, I hope will never be forgotten by "SAMUEL DREW." The favourable reception which had been given to the Essay on the Soul, prompted the author to further mental exertion. His thoughts, by a natural process, passed from a consideration of the Soul to that of the Body; and *This work has gone through several editions in America, and has been translated into French, and published in France. a determination to investigate the evidences of a General Resurrection was the result. From this investigation, the subject of Personal Identity was inseparable; and on these topics he recorded his thoughts till the end of 1805. At this time, he took a survey of his work, but was so much dissatisfied with it, that he threw the whole aside as useless, and half resolved to touch it no more; nor did it appear in print till 1809. It was then, like the Essay on the Soul, published by subscription, and the copyright sold to Mr. Edwards. A second edition of this treatise appeared in 1822. In May, 1805, he entered into an engagement with the late Dr. Thomas Coke, which wholly detached him from the pursuits of trade. Hitherto literature had been the employment of his leisure hours. From this time, it became his occupation. About two years previously to this, Mr. Drew had undertaken, in a course of familiar lectures, to instruct a class of young persons and adults in English Grammar and Composition. A similar course of lectures, with the addition of Physical Geography and Astronomy, was delivered by him. in 1811. These periods are associated with pleasurable feelings in the memory of all his pupils; for in his mode of instruction, knowledge was presented in its most attractive form. In the year 1811, an advertisement appeared in several newspapers, announcing that a gentleman, deceased, had appointed by his will, that a premium of £1200 should be paid for the best treatise, and £400 for the treatise next in merit, on "the Evidence that there is a Being, all-powerful, wise, and good, by whom every thing exists, and particularly to obviate difficulties regarding the Wisdom and Goodness of the Deity; in the first place, from considerations independent of written Revelation; and, in the second place, from the Revelation of the Lord Jesus; and from the whole, to point out the inferences most necessary for, and useful to, Mankind.”For these premiums, Mr. Drew, at the urgent solicitation of several persons, became a competitor, though an unsuccessful one. He concluded, nevertheless, on publishing a book which had cost him so much laborious thought; and, after submitting his manuscript to the inspection of Professor Kidd, of Aberdeen, and Dr. Olinthus Gregory, of Woolwich, and availing himself of their valuable suggestions, it was printed, in 1820, in 2 vols. 8vo. This performance, which Mr. Drew himself considered as by far his best, obtained for him additional reputation; and, in connexion with his preceding Essays, it procured him the distinction of M. A. from the University of Aberdeen. The diploma was presented to him by H. Fisher, Esq., who very handsomely defrayed all the attendant expenses. This Previously to the publication of his treatise on the Being and Attributes of God, Mr. Drew appeared as the biographer of his friend, Dr. Coke. life was published by the Methodist Book-room in 1816, in an octavo volume; and before its appearance, he had undertaken the compilation of a history of his native county, in two quarto volumes. This was not a work of his own suggestion, or one in which he had any personal interest beyond his literary reputation. It was the speculation of a provincial bookseller, who had already published a prospectus of the work, as coming from another pen. The gentleman who had engaged to be the compiler died ere he had got beyond the dedication; and Mr. Drew, as his successor, found himself thrown entirely upon his own resources. work occupied his attention during the greater part of two years; but the publisher becoming bankrupt before its completion, Mr Drew This |